BREAKING: Kurzon Strauss Files Class Action Lawsuits Against Cooley and NYLSAll Education Matters

BREAKING: Kurzon Strauss Files Class Action Lawsuits Against Cooley and NYLS

Lawsuits Seek to Reform Reporting of Post-Graduate Employment Data
August 10, 2011
New York, NY
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Two class action lawsuits alleging fraud, negligent misrepresentation and deceptive business practices were filed today against New York Law School (“NYLS”) and Thomas M. Cooley Law School (“Thomas Cooley”). The suits allege that the schools knowingly inflate reported rates of post-graduate employment and salary statistics to recruit and retain students. The putative class actions were filed by three NYLS graduates and four Thomas Cooley graduates, respectively.

“These suits are not just about NYLS and Thomas Cooley – we believe the practice of inflating employment statistics and salary information is endemic among law schools” stated David Anziska an attorney at Kurzon Strauss LLP (“Kurzon Strauss”). “We hope these suits bring systematic change in the way legal education is marketed by making transparency and accuracy the rule, not the exception. Our efforts to bring about that change begin today.”

In addition to seeking monetary relief for current and former students, the suits seek to ensure that law schools report accurate post-graduate employment data that allows prospective students to make an informed decision regarding whether to invest in a law degree. The suits allege that to recruit students for their programs – which cost tens-of-thousands of dollars per-year – law schools, including NYLS and Thomas Cooley, misrepresent their graduates’ employment prospects by misclassifying graduates who have only secured temporary or part-time employment as being “fully” employed, excluding graduates who do not supply information from employment surveys, and creating post-graduate “jobs programs” into which they hire their own graduates.

“We are bringing these suits because thousands of young lawyers, like the plaintiffs, struggle to purchase a home, raise a family and make investments because they leveraged their future to a law school based on inaccurate information,” stated Jesse Strauss, a Kurzon Strauss partner. “It is time for the legal academy to own up to this problem.”

To help prosecute the Thomas Cooley lawsuit, Kurzon Strauss has retained as local counsel Steven Hyder of The Hyder Law Firm, PC, who is a 2006 graduate of Thomas Cooley.

The cases are Gomez-Jimenez et al. v. New York Law School, Index No. Unassigned (electronically filed), (Supreme Court, New York County) and MacDonald et al. v. Thomas M. Cooley Law School, 11-CV-00831 (W.D.MI).

Kurzon Strauss LLP is one of the premier New York based commercial litigation and corporate transactional law firms. For more information, log on to www.KurzonStrauss.com.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can view the official documents here and here.

Also, this site - Law School Transparency - has summarized the complaints.